Trulia launched the ability to take out ads on their site. It was only a matter of time before they found a way to increase the monetazation on their site. Trulia saw that the Google Adwords platform was making money for Google and thought they would join the party.

They are allowing their primary source of advertisers (agents) to advertise on their site. So yes they are targeting us, the real estate professionals, as their primary advertiser and are gearing things up to get us to advertise with them.

So let’s look at this for a little bit.

  • Ads are done on a flat fee model $29-$39 a month.
  • Real estate professionals can advertise listings or their profile
  • The primary source of advertisers and hence the profit for trulia is real estate agents

Trulia is going after the number one thing that consumers are looking for and that is the listings, the very listings agents work hard to procure, and now they have to advertise around their own listings. Before everyone starts writing in I am fully aware that other companies (Zillow.com, Realtor.com. activerain.com) do the same thing but this is exactly the reason that agents and all real estate professionals need to make sure to have an internet presence of their own that will attract customers without going through the middle man.

The flat fee is probably the best part of this whole model and platform. The question you have to ask yourself is this:

“Will advertising on Trulia generate me business?”

This depends on the ads that you write and if you can interupt the person from what they are looking for which is listings. I myself would recommend advertising on Google where you already know people are in search mode for information not just listings.

Take control and make sure that your website, blog, and ads are attracting people to you through your SEO and pay per click efforts. This is how you can conquer your own piece of the Internet and not have to depend on the middle man.

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